l all the circumstances.

He put down the newspaper with a little grimace indicative of regret. If
he had only been attached to Scotland Yard, what a case this would have
been for him! Here was a mystery which promised unusual interest.

His mind wandered to the girl, Odette Rider. What would she think of it?
She would be shocked, he thought--horrified. It hurt him to feel that she
might be indirectly, even remotely associated with such a public scandal,
and he realised with a sudden sense of dismay that nothing was less
unlikely than that her name would be mentioned as one who had quarrelled
with the dead man.

"Pshaw!" he muttered, shrugging off the possibility as absurd, and,
walking to the door, called his Chinese servant.

Ling Chu came silently at his bidding.

"Ling Chu," he said, "the white-faced man is dead."

Ling Chu raised his imperturbable eyes to his master's face.

"All men die some time," he said calmly. "This man quick die. That is
better than long die."

Tarling looked at him sharply.

"How do you know that he quick die?" he demanded.

"These things are talked about," said Ling Chu without hesitation.

"But not in the Chinese language," replied Tarling, "and, Ling Chu, you
speak no English."

"I speak a little, master," said Ling Chu, "and I have heard these things
in the streets."

Tarling did not answer immediately, and the Chinaman waited.

"Ling Chu," he said after awhile, "this man came to Shanghai whilst we
were there, and there was trouble-trouble. Once he was thrown out from
Wing Fu's tea-house, where he had been smoking opium. Also there was
another trouble--do you remember?"

The Chinaman looked him straight in the eyes.

"I am forgetting," he said. "This white-face was a bad man. I am glad he
is dead."

"Humph!" said Tarling, and dismissed his retainer.

Ling Chu was the cleverest of all his sleuths, a man who never lifted his
nose from the trail once it was struck, and he had been the most loyal
and faithful of Tarling's native trailers. But the detective never
pretended that he understood Ling Chu's mind, or that he could pierce the
veil which the native dropped between his own private thoughts and the
curious foreigner. Even native criminals were baffled in their
interpretation of Ling Chu's views, and many a man had gone to the
scaffold puzzling the head, which was soon to be snicked from his body,
over the method by which Ling Chu had detected his crime.

Tarling